


How could you?

by borogravia



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 02:20:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4287021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borogravia/pseuds/borogravia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killian feels guilty for the fates of the women in his life</p>
            </blockquote>





	How could you?

**Author's Note:**

> Round 2. Apparently, I find writing fluff a lot harder than angst. Sorry. Hope you enjoy, please let me know what you think, especially any room for improvement. 
> 
> I dont own any of the characters or Once. Adam and Eddy do.

He drifted awake as the warm morning sun filtered slowly into his cabin. His eyes remained closed as he basked in the comfort of the warm arm across his chest, the leg curled across his hips, the scent of her hair wafting under her nose. Lemons and wind and gentle musk. Perhaps a whiff of sex from the previous evening which made the corner of his mouth perk up smugly. Peeking out of one eye, his watched her breathe as his hand ran softly through her hair and she sighed quietly into his chest. He watched as the dark chocolate brown caught the sun, chocolate lightening through russet, absorbing the light, copper tones now fading to golden blonde. He frowned, confused. This wasn’t supposed to be her. This was before.

 

The night air was cold against his flushed cheeks. His breath crystallised into a small cloud that sparkled slightly under the glint of the streetlights. His love hugged his arm, one hand in his, fingers entwined. Her body pulled flush against his side as they walked and she rested his head against his shoulder. She made him feel whole in a way he hadn’t done for centuries. He may have been driven and motivated for his near 300 years but vengeance cannot feel the emptiness left by love lost. He kissed her on the forehead before she pulled away briefly to drop into Grannys and pick up their coffees. But it wasn’t his Emma who returned to him, sliding his coffee cup into his conveniently sized hook. It wasn’t Emma who slid back under his free arm with a smile. It was his Milah.

 

The first time he saw her was in a tavern. She was sat with her back to him, leaning against the bar and nursing a drink but he could tell from her stance that she was listening to him telling stories to the local floosy. It brought a sly smile to his face. Walnut curls, slender waist, stubborn set to her shoulder. O yes, she looked like she could be a lot of fun. He finished his story and emptied his tankard. As he went to stand, feeling the numbness of alcohol permeate his limbs mildly, she stood and started towards the door. He rushed forward, beating her to the door and stepping front of her with a swagger and a smirk. He remembered this. The first time he met her. He had been so arrogant, wanting to flirt, be challenged by a woman he could tell would hold her own against him unlike most of the simpering morons who giggled in his direction, wooed by his charm and looks and leather. But when she had looked up at him from under her eyelashes, big blue eyes and determined steel in her expression, he had realised that this woman would be more than just a provocative distraction for the evening. He had wanted her of course. But the way she had laughed at him, challenged him, the way she aspired for adventure and freedom. It blew him away. When her husband has arrived later that evening, he was interested but unconcerned. His arrogance remained unthreatened by his inferior countenance. But his breath caught slightly when her boy called out from behind his father. As Henry stepped forward, he frowned. Henry wasn’t Milah’s son. He remembered this. Bae was Milah’s son. She turned to look at the woman he was already falling in love with but her face had changed. Gone were the sea blue eyes and coffee coloured hair, replaced by flashing blonde and sparkling green. Emma rose and moved to her boy, pulling her into his arms. The boy’s father placed his hand on her shoulder as they moved away, Bae’s eyes catching Hook’s accusingly. Not this wasn’t right. This was Milah not Emma. This had been different.

 

When they pulled him from beneath the pile of heart-wrenched corpses, the first thing he had seen was her green eyes. But he had learnt his lesson this time. He wouldn’t fall like he had done before. He had known he was attracted to her immediately, even more so when she saw through his act and tied him to that blasted tree. As he told her on the beanstalk, he loved a challenge and that she definitely was. She was the most fun he had had in a very long time but he wasn’t going to just forget his Milah for her. Especially after she left him handcuffed in the care of the giant. Even when she made him want to do something good for someone who wasn’t himself for the first time in decades, he hadn’t felt more than an intriguing fancy for her. He cared enough to want her to be happy, to want to protect her boy, especially now he knew who Henry’s father was but he wasn’t really doing that for Emma. It was for Milah, it was for Bae, to make up for his letting both of them down. Then she kissed him.

He had wanted her to kiss him, goaded her into it. Who wouldn’t want to kiss a beautiful woman like her? All fire and strength and anger and grace. He hadn’t expected it to blow him away like that first meeting with Milah had. Their lips met with fury, passion, intensity. He forgot to breathe, he couldn’t think. All he knew was her lips, his lips and the rush of emotion coursing through him. He hadn’t felt this way for so long, he wasn’t entirely sure what is was at first. But when she pulled back and told him it was a “one time thing”, he realised that it was making his heart break. Then he noticed that her voice wasn’t her own. He opened his eyes and was faced with Milah. Beautiful, strong, fearless Milah. But there wasn’t love in her eyes. It was hate.

“How could you?”

 

The ropes across his chest were pulled tight, restricting his breath. His heart was pounding with fear and panic as the Crocodile thrust his hand into Milah’s chest. She shook slightly as she gasped in pain. He knew that pain intimately; agony, tight and hot, making it hard to breath, panic rising through you. It hurt more to see it happen to his love, his Milah. He managed to wrench himself free of the mast as she fell, catching her before she hit the wooden deck of his ship. She was shaking in his arms, afraid of what was coming even if she didn’t want to show it. He knew he was moaning “no” as he brushed a lock of hair from her face. He heard her heart cracking and disintegrating rather than saw it, his eyes focused on his beloved whispering “how could you?” to him as her eyes dulled and she slipped away and his eyes closed in pain. Wait, what?

 

He opened his eyes on the dark, frigid streets of Storybrooke, wind howling as the darkness attacked Regina. Emma’s eyes were locked with his, terrified and brimming with tears. He could barely breathe; it was happening again. As those three precious words passed her lips, words he hadn’t needed to hear but had longed for regardless, his heart broke rather than swelled. Those words shouldn’t feel like goodbye. Not again. He didn’t even have chance to kiss her before she pushed him back and thrust the dagger into the darkness, accepting it into her, becoming what he had feared and despised for so long. He held her eye contact for as long as he could, not wanting her to feel alone, wanting her to know that he loved her too even though he had not had time to tell her. Then the darkness lifted her into the air and he couldn’t see her anymore, her form lost in the whirling lack of light, the emptiness. He knew to expect the fall of the dagger, the ache in his soul when it clanged to the ground. So when a body fell to the concrete, curled up away from him, his heart soared. Perhaps this time would be different, he could tell her. Could hold her and let her know that he would never let the darkness take her. Hope filled him as he reached her side until she turned and looked up at him. This wasn’t his Emma, his beautiful, determined force of nature. Blue eyes looked up at him with hatred, bitterness. Chestnut waves framed her angry face.

“How could you?” Milah growled. Killian stumbled back, not understanding, shocked to see his lost love full of so much fury.

“How could you forget me? I gave up everything for you. My husband. My son. My LIFE!” her voice raising with each sentence in turn.

“Three HUNDRED years, you were faithful. You loved me, fought for me, avenged me. You even cared for my SON! And you betray my sacrifice for this?! For this idiot girl who barely understand love, who gave up everything she had with you, threw away your love to save the happy endings of others?! The woman who helped to SAVE the Dark One?!”

“No Milah, wait…” he begged stepping back as she advanced on him.

“No Milah, do go on. He deserves every word. How could he ever be worthy of women such as we?” That voice. That voice that was so very much his Emma and so very wrong at the same time. He felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as he slowly turned to face her. His Dark Swan.

Clad in a black leather jacket, skin tight leggings and thigh high boots that he would normally find so very distracting, barely registered to him when he saw her face. Her long hair was scraped back, pulling her face taut and gaunt. Her lips were painted scarlet red and sneered at him. But her eyes destroyed him. Like Milah’s, full of hate. No longer meadow green but yellow and reptilian. Like the Crocodile’s. She had become what he had hated for so long and she was smiling about it.

“You threw away your sole purpose of 300 years for me, Killian. You gave up your home, your past, your Milah. For this. You don’t get a happy ending, Killian. You don’t deserve one” she hissed at him.

Killian fell to his knees, his guilt and pain and sadness overwhelming him. He couldn’t breathe, he could barely see for his tears.

“So bold, so brave, so arrogant until faced by the one thing he can’t really hide from. His own pathetic failings. The women he loved but didn’t deserve. Who he cursed. Doomed from the moment they met him” drawled Milah, circling him to his right.

“Foolish enough to think he deserved happiness. So worthless. He couldn’t even avenge you in over 300 years, Milah! Wallowed in his bitterness and anguish instead. Instilling fear into others to mask his inability to kill one man. If he had been a better swordsman, you might’ve never have died. If he’d managed to avenge you, I wouldn’t have had chance to become the Dark One. He did this to us” Emma mocked, circling to his left.

Now he looked up to find them facing him, holding the Dark One dagger, the bane of his existence for so long, between them above his chest. Ready to take their rightful vengeance on the man who betrayed them both. In spite of everything, he wasn’t afraid as the curved blade swung down.

 

 

Killian bolted upright in his bed. Sweat poured down his face and bare chest, matting his hair, stinging his eyes, mingling with his tears. He was breathing hard, sheets twisted around him from his restless sleep. He ran his hand over his face as he attempted to calm his heartrate. His nightmares were getting worse. His guilt was starting to take over and he really couldn’t let it. It didn’t matter if it was his fault or not, if he believed Emma’s parents reassurances that he had not done this to Emma, that she was being a hero. What mattered was that this time, he wasn’t going to let the woman he loved disappear. He was going to find Emma and save her, no matter what it took. Not for the sake of his own happy ending, he had given up on that. But for hers.


End file.
